


Alternates

by Twitchiest



Series: Apocalypse Girl [14]
Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-21
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-16 09:37:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 11,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7262674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Twitchiest/pseuds/Twitchiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Things that didn't happen in the Apocalypse Girl series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Wolf Run Wild

_**One** _

This is how it changes:

She leads Boss back there the next eveing, moving under cover of long twilight shadows. He's built a fire outside of the house. He stares into the flames.

Boss stays in a shadow. Bay approaches, padding across concrete. His face lights up when he sees her. "You're alright!"

"I'm sorry," Bay says, and lies. "I didn't like that place much."

"You'll get used to it," he says. "Come here."

She comes.

He holds out a gun. "I found it in an office," he says. "A handgun. Only the best for you, Bay."

She takes it.

_**Two** _

He always knew she doesn't like guns.

She takes it, turning it in her hands. It's loaded, the safety off.

Just because she doesn't like guns doesn't mean she knows nothing about them.

"What's wrong?" he says. "You're not happy. You should be happy."

She opens her mouth and shuts it again.

A loud footfall catches his attention. He whirls around and sees Boss.

"Funny meeting you here," Boss says. "Having fun?"

"Please," Bay says, and doesn't know why. "Please."

Darren grins, stepping towards the fire, back proud and straight. "Yes, we are, Helena."

Bay flinches. This isn't -

Boss smiles.

_**Three** _

Darren says, "You're a hypocrite."

Boss tilts her head, staring at him across the fire.

"I made the computers work. I watched you. I saw both of you." He moves forwards, eyes fire-bright. "You had no right to judge me."

Boss says, "I didn't do the judging." Voice soft, face hard, unafraid. "I said nothing at all."

Bay curls her fingers around the gun.

"I'm just like you," Darren says. "Only I'm younger and stronger and so much better.

Boss smiles, and it is not kind.

"Kill her," Darren says. "Bay, kill her."

Bay raises the gun, her hand shaking.

_**Four** _

She doesn't like weapons. The gun's old, rusted. It might not work.

Excuses.

But she can't.

She lowers it.

Boss' smile fades. For a moment, Bay feels the chill terror of having disappointed her.

"I can't," she says. "I'm sorry. I can't."

"Manor needs you," Boss says.

Bay shakes her head. "I can't," she says, on the verge of tears. "Please. Don't make me. I can't do it."

Darren turns to look at her. "Bay," he says. "You came for me."

Trembling, she drops the gun at her feet. "I can't," she says. "Not this, not now, not him, please-"

**_Five_ **

"Come with me," Boss says.

Bay goes. Darren reaches for her, but she slips away.

In the dark, Boss says, "You're walking away?"

"I'm sorry," Bay says. "I'm so sorry but I can't do it, I can't -"

"Shut up," Boss says. Bay shuts up.

Boss says, "He's dangerous."

"He's ill," Bay says. "I can help him, I can keep him in line."

Boss tilts her head.

"I have to try," Bay says, helpless. "I know there's no going back with him, but he's -" Her throat is threatening to close up. "I'm sorry. I have to try."

Boss frowns, glancing back.

_**Six** _

Darren is pacing by the fire, looking at them, looking away. She can see the tiredness in his face, features drawn, lips pressed tight together. Bay wants to go to him.

Boss says, "Three years."

Bay says, "I don't understand."

"You have three years," Boss says. "I'm giving you that long. If you don't come back at the end, I will find you. Nothing else matters."

Bay swallows and nods. "Three years," she says. "I understand."

"You owe me," Boss says. "Manor needs you. No matter how far you roam, you will leave, and you will come back to us."

_**Seven** _

Bay takes two steps back towards the fire, then turns, says, "Are we monsters?"

"You're not a monster," Boss says. "You're a wolf."

Bay shivers.

"You set a wolf to guard against wolves," Boss says. "Always."

She turns her back on Boss and goes to Darren.

He says, "Bay, I don't understand."

"It's okay," she says. "It doesn't matter. We're going to leave Manor alone."

Darren says, "Bay, they hurt us."

"They threw you out because you're dangerous to them," she says. "But it's all right. Everything will be all right. I'm not going to leave you."

The lie stings.

**_Eight_ **

Boss leaves.

Everyone leaves.

Bay checks, a week later, a week of Darren resting fitfully, fever rising and breaking. The camp is gone. Everyone, gone.

But there's a bag, behind a wall, a proper bag with dry foods, a pair of clean blankets, empty water skins, and a note pinned to the top, wishing her luck. It's Leander's awful scrawl.

She hugs the bag and sobs for an hour.

Darren's illness doesn't clear for another fortnight. Bay forages for food in the city. It's easier than she thought it might be. There's deer, and whole gardens full of wild-seeded vegetables.

**_Nine_ **

Darren isn't there when she wakes up.

She bolts to her feet and searches. She hunts him, but does not find until she thinks of a place she does not want to see.

She goes there.

She finds him, on his knees, staring down at white, old weapons.

She walks quiet. There is stillness within her, now.

"Helena sent you to kill me," he says. "I would have done it, and so I must die. You're choosing a monster, Bay."

"It's my choice," Bay says, soft.

"Would you kill me?"

"Not yet," she says, and it is not a lie.

**_Ten_ **

They have two bags, blankets, water, and they have each other.

That is enough. It may be enough.

She understands that it will be hard. Away from cities, life will be harder. But it is cities that ruin man, she thinks. There are temptations here too enchanting and dangerous for them.

They leave at dawn. Darren has to rest, along the way, but that's fine. He'll get stamina back, in time. His gaze settles on flame, but he speaks to her about it, and maybe they'll control that urge, in time.

She hopes and wishes they can.

She must try.


	2. Sea Wraith

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A rewriting of Sea Change; not much differs, but what does matters.

_**One** _

There are ghosts in her town.

They are a woman, neither young nor old, with dusky-dark skin far lighter than her own and a man, thin, pale-skinned. They turned up one day and simply didn't leave, like others do.

Siti peers over a crumbling balcony at their camp, in a shadowed alcove. They have packs and sticks, a firepit, and not much else.

It's none of her business. She's quiet. Nobody ever notices her, or wants to stay here. Travellers want company, not loneliness and the crashing sea. They'll leave soon and her town will be empty and safe again.

_**Two** _

Her town sits on the cliffs.

She climbs down them and fishes perched on a large rock, with a net on a stick, slow and patient. She collects seaweed, and edible plants from the cliff edges and gardens, like she'd been taught once.

Storms blow in all sorts of things that collect between the rocky headlands. She's found entire ships there, blown in one tide and destroyed in the next.

She knows every part. It doesn't take long to realise the ghosts are visiting the library. She worries about that, but they put the books back where they found them.

_**Three** _

It's all right, she thinks. She wasn't attached to the library. She has the books she wants in her sleeping place.

The female ghost worries her.

All spring it spends walking around her town, looking at it. It stands on the cliffs and finds her paths down to the rocky beach. It drinks from the spring, where the others built a dam to make a pool.

She doesn't like it. Not at all. Strangers don't matter when they just take things. This ghost makes her town new, and strange, puts darkness in the shadows and monsters in the empty places.

_**Four** _

The man likes fire.

Siti thinks maybe that's why they're out here, away from everyone else. Haunting her. The ghost tries to keep him from fixing on it, but every time he goes past their firepit he pauses to stare at the flames.

It's not so bad, Siti thinks. It means they're some of the people that everyone else rejects. That's fine, as long as they're not violent, and don't take what's hers. She doesn't mind sharing her town with them for a while.

Still, she watches, sometimes. The living, breathing ghost and the fire nymph in a human skin.

_**Five** _

Siti doesn't like the cliffs.

She came here five winters ago, has been alone here two, and every year the cliff-faces shiver and shake and collapse a little. The sea batters them, hard and angry, and every year she has to find a new path down.

When she sees the ghost staring into a rock pool in the moonlight, body-lengths from foaming waves, Siti thinks she likes them even less. She cannot scramble up, from here.

The ghost turns her head and stares at her, unblinking. Siti stands still. When the ghost turns away she bolts, deer-fast over damp rocks.

_**Six** _

The ghost is waiting for her tomorrow, so Siti veers away and doesn't fish. Nor the next. She sits far away and watches the ghost being still and quiet.

On the fifth, maybe sixth, day, the ghost brings food, and sets down a portion far away from her. Siti creeps close enough to snatch it, and runs further across the rocky beach to eat. Sweet potatoes, roasted. They still have a lingering warmth.

The ghost eats with her, and watches her. Hunter. Siti is prey. It's dangerous to stay close to a predator, but this one doesn't move an inch.

_**Seven** _

The ghost watches her fish. The day after she hooks her own net on a stick and mimics it. She falls into the sea. Siti tries not to lean in waiting for the ghost to come back up, and when she does, wide-eyed and coughing, net tight between her fingers, Siti doesn't show her relief.

The ghost swims to shore and takes off most of her clothes. Siti averts her gaze, but it keeps being drawn back to that shameless, sodden figure, lying on a dry rock next to her shirt and trousers, staring at the sky with a smile.

_**Eight** _

Siti makes sure to demonstrate especially slowly, next time. She doesn't know why. She's only safe when she's alone.

The ghost catches a small spiny fish. She dances on her fishing-perch in celebration and falls in again. This time she laughs when she surfaces, treading water, and Siti smiles for a moment before she hides it.

Ghost clambers back on the perch, soaked to the bone. Siti spends so much time staring at her, clothes drawn wet over her skin, that she doesn't catch a single fish.

Ghost catches three, and she shares two of them over a rough campfire.

**_Nine_ **

Siti follows the ghost's steps through the town to reclaim it. Not all. Enough for the town to feel familiar against her skin. She tests the edges, but doesn't take one step over the boundary. She visits almost every old shop and house, scrambling into the heart of ruins amidst sun-bleached bones.

She does not dare to go near the fire nymph.

It's bad enough that Ghost sees her, and talks to her. The nymph doesn't look like _him_ , but he's a man, and he and Ghost fit together so easily. They're happy together, in their own way. That's enough.

**_Ten_ **

She shouldn't, it's dangerous, but when no one's in the camp, Siti dares to explore it.

The bags don't matter to her, tucked behind a concrete block, so she doesn't touch them. She explores how the firepit is made whilst the embers burn low, dug into the ground, almost uniform spherical stones lining the edge.

"What's this?" The nymph. She doesn't look. She whirls and runs, across the clear space, over a half-ruined wall, and gone into spaces she knows, and understands, and cannot be found in.

She waits until sundown to go back to her shelter and sleep, trembling.

**_Eleven_ **

Ghost says, whilst she fishes, "We're not angry. Darren says you were looking at the fire?"

Siti hunches over and stares into the water.

"It's a good thing you have here," Ghost says. "Did you ever think about building a farm?"

To farm you need tools, and Siti doesn't have them. She shakes her head.

"And there's a farmstead to the south. That's good trading, if you could get fish there." Ghost sighs, ties her net and pole to her back, and clambers around to sit next to Siti. "It's not safe here, though," she says. "Not with the cliffs."

_**Twelve** _

Siti must have cut herself on a sharp rock and not noticed. When she gets back to her shelter, a stone-built little hut far from the cliff edge, she sees it then, the dried blood down her leg.

She washes it in water and wraps it in cloth, and washes it again in the sea when she goes back. It hurts, but it's good for her.

It's exhausting, climbing the cliff path with two small fish in her net. The ghost didn't come tonight. Siti shouldn't feel sad about that. The ghost isn't her friend. She doesn't owe it anything.

_**Thirteen** _

Her head hurts.

She stumbles out of shelter for water, then crawls back in and curls up. She's cold, shaking, and her head won't stop hurting. It blurs the world, stretches time out. She sleeps, sometimes, and wakes, and sometimes it's bright and sometimes dark.

The ghost comes back, voice quiet, wraps her in blankets and makes her do things. Tells her stories that haunt her. Siti watches her stand in the door way, talking to a shadow in the night, voice low and worried, and once she glances back. The moon catches her hair and makes her shine, unreal.

_**Fourteen** _

When Siti's head clears she's weak, trembling like a newborn deer. Ghost helps her up and makes her walk, and eat, and drink, until she's stable on her feet, if still so easily tired. There's no going down the cliff, but not because she's weak. There was a storm whilst she shivered, feverish, and part of the cliff collapsed again. The arch under the library is taller and wider.

Ghost moves around and away from her, but she stays close, until one night she doesn't come back at all, and this time Siti cries hot tears into her worn blankets.

_**Fifteen** _

The ghost is there when she wakes.

Siti recoils until her back is against the wall. Ghost doesn't move, sits there, curled in on herself.

Ghost taps her ear, face questioning.

Siti shakes her head and pulls the scarf a little.

Ghost rocks back on her heels. "You're strong," she says. "That's good." She stares at Citi, then around. "Surviving on the edge," she says. "Someone only does that if they don't want to be part of a community. Or they can't."

Siti curls up tight, mirrors the ghost, and buries her head against her arms until Ghost goes away.

**_Sixteen_ **

"I'm sorry," Ghost says to her as she picks through the gardens for plants she can eat. "I had Darren go get medicine for you. It made you better. But he got in a fight with bandits on the way back, and he tried to run interference, but he couldn't, and they found the town. So we had to deal with them."

Found the town, found her -

Siti glances up at Ghost. She has a haunting smile.

"Those bandits won't bother anyone ever again," she says. "And now we have their things, too. It all works out in the end."

_**Seventeen** _

The ghost brings her clothes and shoes that are almost new, and soap so she can wash properly. The clothes are warm in autumn chill.

"You're beautiful," Ghost tells her, cutting her long hair a little shorter. She braids it damp, tight, ties it back. "You already knew that."

The nymph is there, too, sitting on Siti's doorway with a bandaged arm, playing with metal loops.

Siti waits until Ghost is done, then shifts away.

"You can kiss her," the nymph says.

Ghost says, "Darren, I wouldn't -"

"There's too much of you not to share," he says. "We're broken toys."

_**Nineteen** _

Ghost says, "I told him to shut up," as the nymph says, 

"And it's not as if there's a lot about me to like."

"Darren!" Ghost snaps.

"Firebug like me," he says. "I'm just holding you back."

"I chose," Ghost says. "I chose."

Siti doesn't entirely mean to but as Ghost turns back to her, apology on her lips, she kisses her. Cautious. Delicate. Ghost breaks away first. Siti flinches.

Ghost says, "There's a lot you don't know, Siti. It's better if we leave."

Alone is safe. But Siti doesn't want to be alone, now.

Ghost doesn't pull away twice.

_**Nineteen** _

Nightmares shake Siti awake again.

Ghost is warm and soft under rough woollen blankets. She's running her hand over Siti's arm, humming a tune. Siti curls into her and lays still, breathes.

Safety is a lie. They were safe. He was. She can only be safe if she's alone in her familiar town.

Safe is here, too. She doesn't understand why.

The ghost starts singing, soft, words Siti can barely make out. She knows she's falling asleep again. She needs to be awake to be safe.

There's a word for what this is. Siti reaches for it. It slips away.

_**Twenty** _

It's not Ghost that finds her, later, but Nymph. She's sitting near the library.

"You're going to be slippery, aren't you," he says, settling next to her. "I've been looking for you everywhere."

He puts his hand on her shoulder. She stiffens. Doesn't mean to, gives him an apologetic look. He lets go, wry smile twisting his lips.

"You're what you were made," he says. "I'll burn everyone that hurt you, in time, because I'm what I was born. I _can_ do it, you know. I'm even building a flamethrower."

She shouldn't, but she smiles.

"Come with us," he says. 

_**Twenty One** _

Siti doesn't know why she lets Ghost pack up her things. She doesn't ask where the pack came from, or the cart and pony. She sits in the back, near the edge, and watches her town get smaller.

Ghost sits nearby. She's reading a book.

"It's called sign language," she says. "It'll help us talk." She forms shapes with her hands.

Siti shrugs.

"It's my name," Ghost says. "Bay."

Bays are water, shelters from the sea, sweeping and gentle.

"Let me do yours," Ghost says.

Siti leans over and writes her name into Ghost's hands, one letter at a time.

 


	3. The Fuck, part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, that's what it's called. Long story short, fantasy AU with Boss and Leander. I have... no idea. It happened. I'm still working on it. Things happen in this one. Weird violent and creepy-ass shit. Because, you know. This is Helena... so warnings for non-sexual dubcon, for a start.

_**First** _

 

_ **One** _

There was a time when he was not in pain. A time without metal scraping bone, without the chill, inescapable realisation of death, where a heart did not break for - for - 

A time when he was warm, in a distant place.

A time when he could remember his home.

In the dark of the temple, the empty, abandoned temple, dust thick in the air, the statue moves above him.

He laughs, short, hard, hurting. Hallucinating. He is hallucinating now.

The shadow leans in close, stone face, hand cradling his head, and looks down at him.

Pain, twisting.

He screams.

**_Two_ **

He wakes in the golden haze of dawn. She -the woman who came to him last night- strokes his hair, smiling.

"Fancy meeting you here," she says, and laughs.

He smiles. "Fancy that. Have they...?"

She tilts her head. "Have they what?"

"Sent in breakfast," he says. "I'm told you all wake early here. I was promised the best pastries in the kingdom."

She shakes her head. "There's no breakfast for you," she says.

There is pain.

But that was in the dream.

He does not dare to look down.

"But I remember the pastries," she says. "They  _were_  good."

**_Three_ **

He watches his own memories, looking for a sign.

This is him, in his rooms, being given a message with his country's colours. He'd been in this country only a few days. It was to be his first day at the embassy.

The message brought him to a temple. It whispered of secrets. A man, face unknown to him, came forward and didn't speak, only moved too fast in the shadows for him to see the knife before the pain-

He watches himself fall.

He studies the man's face.

"One of your own," she whispers to him. "They betrayed you."

**_Four_ **

"Who are you?" she says.

He doesn't know this place. It's a hall of white marble. There are no doors, no windows, but there is light. The stone itself seems to glow. At one end, there's an empty platform.

"No," she says. "Look at me." She slaps him. "Focus."

It stings.

He looks at her.

"Who are you?" she says.

He opens his mouth.

"Not your name." Her lip curls. "Don't be obvious. Who are you?"

"The ambassador's aide," he says. It's the first thing he thinks of. "A son, a brother-"

"No," she says. "Who are  _you_?"

He says -

**_Five_ **

The bedroom. It's midday.

"I didn't do anything against them," he says. "Not once. I worked my way into this position."

She runs her fingers over his chest in the shape of a symbol he doesn't know. "It's not about you."

"No," he agrees.

"It's never about you," she says, but not to him.

He says, "War. There are people at home who want war."

"So they kill you here?" She laughs.

He sits up. "It's a holy place," he says. "Abandoned or not, it's holy. To spill blood in one, to use one of ours to profane it -"

**_Six_ **

Look back, she tells him. Find the people he offended. Find his enemies.

He dives into his memories. He looks at the people he didn't see before, through the academy, in his apprenticeship, his time in the King's civil service. He makes a list, somewhere deep in his mind, and she reads it, and she laughs.

Now, she says. Find the ones that hate you. The ones connected to power.

He obeys. He can think of nothing but obeying her.

There are things stirring, in the confused, fracture mess of his mind. He ignores them. He searches through his memories.

**_Seven_ **

Evening light scours the world in red and purple.

She sits on the end of the bed, flicking through a book. "Boring," she says. "You remember the concepts, not the words." She tosses the book aside. He winces. 

"The temple," he says. "It looked... in good shape. I didn't know your people kept the old places, like we do."

She shrugs. "They don't," she says. "This one is special. They want to remind themselves that it exists."

"There were no offerings." Not even a bunch of flowers on the dais.

"And they're not my people," she says. "They never were."

**_Eight_ **

A quiet space. An empty space. It is dark. He is sitting. He is still. She is crouched down in front of him. Her face seems softer.

His lips move. "I'm dying."

"Yes," she says.

"It doesn't hurt anymore."

"It hurts a lot," she says. "I took it away. There's going to be a new pain."

"Yours."

She tilts her head. "Yes."

"Why?"

"It's always painful," she says, "Becoming."

"No." He does not want to talk. He is talking. "Why are you doing this to me?"

The corners of her mouth lift. It's almost a real, fond smile. "Why not?"

**_Nine_ **

"The goddess of this holy place is dead," she tells him, a graceful hand cradling his cheek. "They murdered her with silence. She was too complicated for them, mercy, justice, and vengeance all at once. They killed her, but they could not take her power. I did. A man killed me here. I screamed. No one came."

He breathes.

"He should have known not to do it in this place," she says. "I am Helena, who is dead. I am the goddess, who lives again. Now they have given you to me."

She smiles.

"What do you think of that?"

**_Ten_ **

He fights a thousand enemies, in a hell of bodies and knives and fists. He thinks, in some still moment, that perhaps they are landing less blows than before. He hopes he's improving. He wishes for this to end.

"Soon," she tells him, in his head.

His world is blood and pain and getting up again, always getting up, just to fight, and fall, and get up, a weapon in his hand, hilt familiar in his hand, striking forwards and upwards and fast. He never used a weapon like this before.

"Yes," she says. "Yes, you may very well do."

**_Eleven_ **

The whiteness is making his head hurt.

She slaps him again. "Who are you?"

He manages an, "I'm -" before her nails rake his cheek, sharp and biting.

"Stop relating yourself to other people. Who are you?"

He catches her wrist. It's thin. She's smaller than he thought she was, not starvation thin but close. "Don't hit me."

She bares her teeth at him. "Who," she says, dragging out the sounds, "Are you?"

"It doesn't matter," he says. "None of it matters."

Her eyes light up.

"What matters is what I will do," he says, and he is certain of this.

**_Twelve_ **

The bedroom.

In a blink, she's sat in his lap, warm and close, a hand on the back of his neck, the other digging nails into his side. Close, quiet, intimate, she says, "Do you want to live?"

But it is not intimate. She is the entire world, dark eyes deep enough to drown in, and he is choking on the power rising thick and fast around her, casting everything in sickening red-brown and the grey of ash. It is pouring into him. This is invasive, twisting, tainting, pain, and he can't breathe - 

He inhales.

It hurts.

He says, "Yes."

**_Thirteen_ **

This is sacred but not holy, not good. It is dark and cold thing, a perversion, he is becoming profane -

"Stop thinking," she says. She drags him into a hard kiss.

He chokes on everything he wants to say.

"If you want to live," she says, "Want me."

It is not hard. Her power intoxicates. Her smile enchants. She is open and she pulls him down.

He breathes in her power like water, he tastes his blood on her lips, he drowns inside her and she pours herself into the gaping hope that is his death, and she is laughing.

**_Fourteen_ **

He wakes.

The temple is still abandoned, floor thick with dust and, around him, dried blood. He's hungry, thirsty, alone. He's alive.

He regrets.

The statue stands above him. A wraith of a woman crouches next to him, dark eyes, dark hair. The rest is indistinct. She tilts her head. She holds out a knife, hilt-first.

It is not the knife they tried to kill him with. It's simple. Plain. In the dim light filtering through blocked-up windows, the silver gleams red.

He takes it.

"Now," she says. "Come with me. Teach them of my mercy."

He rises. He walks.

_**Fifteen** _

"Find me a woman betrayed," she whispers in his ear, as he apologises to the ambassador for missing his appointment. The ambassador looks surprised to see him. "Find me a body so I may walk with you, and we will burn all that should be. It will be beautiful, my sweet."

He smiles and nods at the right moments. Every word he says tastes like blood and ash.

She kisses his cheek. It burns. He shivers.

"Mercy," she breathes. "Justice. Vengeance."

"Are you quite well?" the ambassador says.

"I'm sorry, sir," he says, holding his smile. "Could you repeat that?"

 


	4. The Fuck, part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The alternate title is "Awfully Angry Goddess". That's not really a good title either... and this is where the really creepy thing happens. I'm warning you. Basically sort of half-grooms someone for a sacrifice. Ish. Not blood. And it's phrased as payment - but this is BOSS AS A VENGEANCE GODDESS. I don't know what else I expected!

**Second**

 

**One**

When he staggers out of the temple, drunk on such _power_ , it is night. Dark. Moonless. The temple is surrounded by warehouses, and they loom like mountains.

He could be home, in the foothills of his mountains, where the world is wild.

He is on the streets of a strange city.

A noise. He skitters into a shadow. A man comes out of a nearby building, bright-lit, a flash of music. He comes down the alley.

The man turns. "Here, what's this?"

In his shadow, Leander sees a wealth of horrors. He hears screaming.

He lunges.

It is so easy.

_**Two** _

Two weeks into his job, nothing has changed. The ambassador is friendly. Good-humoured.

Sometimes he seems to look upon Leander with worry. The goddess mentions it to him. Leander makes sure to glance up every other time and say, "Ambassador?"

It is if the older man is nervous.

The former general Sitam Malon, ambassador, is not known to be an anxious man.

This time he says, "Nothing, lad. Thinking."

"Of course, sir." Leander inclines his head and goes back to writing.

"Some friends and I are going hunting," the ambassador says. "It should prove relaxing. Will you come?"

Leander hesitates. He makes a show of looking at all the paperwork he has to deal with, the letters only he respond to on the ambassador's behalf. "Than you for the offer, sir," he says. "I'm afraid I can't." Then, as a person in his position _should_ show ambition, "Perhaps another time?"

_**Three** _

He has a room in a boarding house for the young, rich, and adventurous. He drags himself up the stairs and no one comes to investigate. In the safety of his rooms, he staggers to the long couch and sits.

It's green. He doesn't like it. It came with the rooms.

The knife is still in his hand. He hasn't cleaned it, but it is clean. He thinks it drinks blood.

In his other hand, he clutches a heavy purse, taken off the dead. Being near the money makes him feel sick. He can feel the death it paid for.

_**Four** _

Leander lets himself be known for frequenting respectable drinking places and trying a pint of some new ale every night, then tipping some maid and going home.

He does not go home.

The goddess whispers in his ear and his stops, turning. His hand twitches, drawing on the knife from wherever it hides, and he can see the crimes any person has committed. This time, a woman who sleeps with men to rob them.

He relaxes. It doesn't make the drink he couldn't taste twist in his stomach, because it isn't her she's stealing for. He can almost see the silhouette of a village, on a hill...

His hand goes to his purse.

"Wait," he says. "Miss." She is young. "Please." He crosses the dark street. He presses his purse into her hands. It is dead men's money, in truth. "Go home," he says. "This city will kill you."

Mercy.

**_Five_ **

There are taps, a wash bowl, but only cold water.

He peels his clothes off. They're ruined. They must be burned

He washes himself with unsteady hands.

His chest bears no scar, but in a certain place it aches.

The goddess runs ghostly hands over his shoulders. She feels solid, real, so hot she'll burn him to nothing.

"Sleep," she breathes.

He bites down a groan.

"Just sleep, my sweet," she says. "Rest."

Next door, his neighbour seems to be entertaining. A man and a woman, by the sound of it.

He goes to bed, and he wakes at dawn.

**_Six_ **

On the ambassador's day of hunting, Leander searches the man's office.

He makes the excuse of organising the piles in search of a needed document. The secretaries, each man and woman jealous of his position, laugh and make jokes at his expense.

Alone, Leander moves piles around in a way that makes them seem smaller each time, and he looks.

He finds.

There is a locked black case secured to the underside of the desk by a leather strap. It takes the entire lunch hour to pick, and inside there are a stack of letters, each one encoded.

They could be from a lover, or the ambassador's friends, discussing a sensitive matter.

"This is it," the goddess breathes.

Innocent things are not locked away.

That night, when the only others in the buildings are guards, he lights a fresh candle and begins to copy them.

He doesn't sleep much, anyway.

**_Seven_ **

There is a visit to a tailor to attend to, so he can get a new coat. He hastens to tell the man and his wife that he wishes to be fashionable, but not showy.

A week later, he receives a black coat cut in a fashion timeless, with embellishments to match. The buttons are velvet. He rubs them every so often.

He makes sure to tip them handsomely. It is a dead man's money, not his. He would be rid of it.

The goddess eyes him up and down. "Good," she says. "Very good."

Her approval seems to matter.

**_Eight_ **

The next morning, he presents his tiny desk, papers in their rightful places, to the ambassador. He does so with an air of pride. All his work is complete.

He did not sleep at all. He isn't tired.

The older man has relaxed. He smiles more readily. "Good work," he says. "Perhaps a reward is in order? Usually when they send someone, it takes months to train them up."

Leander ducks his head. "I didn't get where I was by sleeping, sir," he says.

"Did anyone?" The embassador laughs. "Let me reward you with dinner, hm? My friend has invited me to a private gathering, next week. Come with me."

"As you say, sir," Leander says.

The goddess drapes herself about his shoulders, chilling him. He doesn't react. She trails fingers across his neck. "Poison," she says. "We can deal with that."

"It would be an honour, sir," he says.

**_Nine_ **

Only he can see the goddess.

He doesn't dare speak to her aloud. There are rumours, of madness and day-mazes, that can ruin a man. She seems content to read his thoughts as if they were her own.

She drifts through things as if they weren't there, but she is real when she touches him, or moves an object about the room. So very real, in the dark of a long night -

"Get me a body," she tells him, running her nails down his chest, sharp enough to leave him bleeding. "I want a body. I want to feel again."

**_Ten_ **

The gathering, it seems, will last well into the early morning. The ambassador sends a message, so like the first, to remind him to pack a small bag. They are to stay the night.

The handwriting matches.

He takes a single change of clothes and a book. What an aide would carry with him.

The host is the lord Ashdown, golden-haired and blue eyed. He radiates honesty and goodness. He discusses with a quick wit.

He once served under Sitam Malon.

Leander smiles and falls into easy discussion, but does not trust him.

He drinks. If it is poisoned, he doesn't feel it tonight. He is surrounded by people of rank and power. Despite the goddess, boredly insulting them all, he tries to appear worthy of their attentions. If, perhaps, a little awed.

Better not to show his disgust.

He feels hunted, in the shadow of a dozen curious stares.

**_Eleven_ **

"There," the goddess breathes.

He glances the same direction as her wild, hungry gaze. Just a moment. It is enough. He sees a woman, a server with a wine jug, short, thing, dark eyes watching the room. Her cheek is the dull yellow of a healing bruise.

In that instant, he knows there could be no better host for his goddess.

"Convince her," the goddess says, and drifts across the room.

He turns back to the conversation at hand. No one seems to have noticed but for his host, who spares him a flash of warm smile and says nothing.

**_Twelve_ **

The host has to be willing.

There is a part of him that knows this, as solid and painful as fingers buried in his skin, as the knife that comes when he wishes for it. She must agree, as he did.

When he stumbles into the room prepared for him, the woman is there, sat on the bed.

"What?" he says. But he knows. The telling smile. His host, who prides himself on happy guests.

"No," he says, when she rises. "You take the bed. I'll sleep over here. I won't have you hurt over me." Then, sharp, "That _bastard_."

_**Thirteen** _

Tanie.

He wakes in the early morning, when she is draping a blanket over him. She starts.

He yawns and asks her name.

Tanie, a girl who left a failing village for the city three years ago. Sat together, on the floor in front of the fire with the blanket wrapped around them, she tells him. She has more money here, more chances, but she keeps finding men who'll beat her if she even blinks wrong.

He consoles. He comforts.

She speaks, as dawn crowns the world, of a black desire to see her latest lover dead.

His goddess smiles.

**_Fourteen_ **

After breakfast, the ambassador and his host both insist he come to a religious ceremony. It is for blessings. They line up what seems to be everyone in the city for a chance to kneel before a man in blue and white robes and receive the lash of a bunch of ivy leaves and a water-drawn symbol on their foreheads.

Everyone else walks away joyful.

Leander does not, but he pretends. As he waits for the rest of his party, his goddess leans into him and says, "You've worried them."

"I know," he murmurs.

Even the priest looks at him, a fear stirring in his face.

_No_ , he thinks. Not at him. _Next_ to him. He casts a glance at his goddess. She's scanning the crowds, seemingly unaware of the scrutiny.

He meets the priest's worried eyes and raises his eyebrows.

The priest turns away. 

The ambassador watches him, instead.

**_Fifteen_ **

He dresses in rough clothing and changes his gait. A poor beggar, at the back door of a grand mansion, asking for Tanie.

Tanie comes.

He catches at her hand and whispers for her to come to the temple amongst warehouses, the temple abandoned.

She shivers at the mention of it and drags her hands away from his. She bids him go, scorn and derision plain for anyone to hear, and he scurries away, bent double under the weight of her anger.

Deep in the dark alleys, he straightens, and he reaches for the knife.

The goddess laughs.

They hunt.

**_Sixteen_ **

Two nights later, Tanie comes to the temple.

He's waiting.

He is wearing a long, black robe he found in an anteroom. It has seen better days but it is clean.

She comes soft and quiet, and pauses by the side door to take her shoes off. She walks through the dust barefoot. Her head is down, but in the dark she doesn't seem to see the stain where he didn't die.

He stands before the statue.

She goes to her knees.

"Help me," she says. "There is a man who needs to die."

Head bowed, he stays silent.

"He keeps mistresses," she says. "He beats their children out of them." She raises her gaze. "I know this place. This is where the dead goddess sleeps. Can she punish him?"

The voice that comes out of him is not entirely his. "Everything has a cost."

"I will pay," she says.

**_Seventeen_ **

He raises her up to kiss her. He does not know why. She is still, gentle, supplicant.

"You don't know the price," he says, himself.

"I have nothing." The words crack in her mouth. "No home to go to, no life in this place. I will pay. I will pay anything."

"Never say anything." The goddess laughs. "Didn't you ever learn that, Tanie Moon-Dancer?"

He looks at Tanie with such longing grief.

Tanie stares to his left for a while, pale. Then her eyes meet his. "Anything," she says. "Let my life mean _something_."

Her lips taste of stolen treats. 

**_Eighteen_ **

He takes only the time to slip home and pay a boy to carry a message to the ambassador, that he has taken with a stomach upset and needs rest, then goes back to the temple, disguised.

Tanie lies in the dust on the dais, a body, chest rising and falling steadily, arms crossed over her chest. She appears a goddess herself.

He sits and waits.

If a goddess, then a goddess despoiled, delightedly dishevelled.

He waits.

The sun sets in scarlet across a hall of dirty marble.

If he looks away for a while, then back, he thinks he can see her body changing. Thinning out, perhaps. Her hair changing from dark brown to glossy black, iridescent in fractured rays of moonlight.

As silver changes to rosy pink, the body that is Tanie no longer stirs and opens her eyes. They are dark. She smiles at the temple ceiling. 

**_Nineteen_ **

There are clothes to buy for her. But the goddess demands food, and so he feeds her, that afternoon, in the best eatery he can afford.

She is unkept. Wild. She directs their waiter with clear command, a regal manner. He stays quiet until she addresses him.

She glances up, once, and smiles.

"So this is where my aide has gotten to!" the ambassador booms, behind him.

He flushes - _anger_ , not embarrassment, how dare he! - but rises and turns, pretending politeness. "Sir," he says.

"Don't worry so much." The ambassador laughs. "She's a pretty one, lad. You should have said."

**_Twent_ **

The ambassador insists on bringing them across to his table, where he's with Lord Ashdown.

"So," he says. "Who is the lovely lady?"

Leander says, "She -"

"Helena Carver," she says, and offers her hand. The ambassador takes it. Her smile is charming, polite. "I've heard so much about you, sir."

"And I have heard nothing of you." The ambassador smiles back. "Where have you been hiding, madame?"

"About and around," she answers. "Waiting."

There is an undercurrent here. Leander doesn't dare think about it, for fear of drowning.

"But I do believe I've found who I'm looking for," she says.


	5. The Fuck, part 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yes. Oh god, there's more of it, is a perfectly suitable response. I'd prefer "Yay!" but let's face it. Creeeeepy.
> 
> ... there's less creepy shit in this and more plot.

**Third**

 

**_One_ **

The ambassador knows.

Leander finds talismans against evil littered around the embassy. They're the kind his family makes, bags of herbs and carved figurines hanging from nooses. A welcome sight. As he reaches up to touch the one near his desk, he catches the embassador watching him.

They don't burn him, or the goddess, real and whole and somehow still intangible when she decides to follow him to work. They only burn demons and the possessed.

The ambassador may know something, but Leander runs an unharmed finger over an intricately carven leg, the man's face shatters into worry and doubt.

**_Two_ **

It seems he cannot avoid invitations, these days. Lord Ashdown and his friends are the very image of welcoming elite. They seem to value his opinions. They are polite to Helena, like she's a lady worth courting, although they must know, suspect, something happened in the temple. That she is not human.

He bought her two fine dresses, but every time she puts them on they change to something new. Nothing too fine, but always in fashion.

When he can, he works on his copies of the letters. The code defies him at every turn.

Trapped in a circle of conspirators, bound by politeness, scrutinised and pored over and examined, his skin crawls, his nerves run high. He sees a threat in every smile and danger in dinners. He feels he is being watched. Followed.

He smiles. He is polite. He begs out of as many invitations as he can.

**_Three_ **

There are other matters to attend to.

A debt owed.

Leander disguises himself as that broken soul again some nights, and slips out to disreputatable drinking holes where the drink isn't called ale or beer or anything at all, and comes by the pint. One huddled shadow in the corner can be easily ignored.

Tanie's man, the abuser, is well known in these places. He runs a smuggling ring, and more besides. Tanie wasn't yet one of his many mistresses - one for every day of the week, some men laugh - but, one by one, he visits those women and speaks to them.

**_Four_ **

The ambassador has his own gala, where representatives from a dozen countries come and glitter for a night. Princes, too, and others. With Helena on his arm, Leander goes unnoticed until the ambassador introduces him as his aide to yet another set of nobility.

There are competitions for prizes of toys and trinkets. There is food beyond measure and enough wine to drown a herd of horses. There are meetings, too, discussions that seem trivial but have depth beyond measure, people who weren't hired as servants creeping between tents where some talk in private. 

Leander has the knife out, tucked in a hidden sheath against his leg. It's close enough to skin that he sees echoes of horrors in people's shadows, mingling darknesses, so many that his head aches with the effort of ignoring them.

If she asked, he would kill everyone at the gala, gladly.

She does not ask.

**_Five_ **

Tanie's man calls himself Prister. For a ship, Leander discovers. There's a story behind it he doesn't care enough to learn. Prister has a warehouse near the goddess' temple, full of his own people. Everyone knows about it. Everyone knows the Guard lets thieves and murderers sort themselves out, as long they aren't obvious about it

Leander is a ball of rags huddled in a corner, watching people come and go.

The goddess doesn't offer help. He doesn't ask. He accepted the deal. This is his task. For Tanie.

He has some idea of how he's going to kill Prister.

**_Six_ **

Evening, in the embassy. The staff are gone. Leander should be, too, but he left something at his desk in the ambassador's office.

There are voices coming from the office. The door is ajar.

He hesitates. He listens.

Lord Ashdown says, "- find someone else."

"No," the ambassador says. "No one else will cause true fury. The Chrysanctumites would demand the murderer's head on a spike. Especially a man of his bloodline. It must be. And yet -"

"God-killers," Ashdown says. Disdain. "Why does the King allow them to exist? These people destroy temples, not gods. Perhaps that's a better way."

"These people left a demon alive," the ambassador says.

Quiet.

Lord Ashdown says, "There are no demons left."

"Yet Seagrave is alive." Ambassador Sitam Malon sounds alone. Afraid. "When your man swears he lay dying. When holy men swear he is possessed. We must find another way to end this."

**_Seven_ **

"Chrysanctum," the goddess says, when they're alone in his rooms. "You come from there." He can almost feel her digging into his memories.

"I grew up there," he tells her. Amongst snow-tipped mountains and deep, warm valleys, where vast buildings full of shrines lay, covered in living crystalline structures that grew like trees, rooted in the stone bricks.

There were thousands of gods there. They all came of their own volition. Old gods, tired, alone. They came to sleep, to be remembered and loved. To learn how to die.

"Your bloodline," she says. "Your father. The _head priest_."

She laughs.

**_Eight_ **

He could kill Prister when he was out, guarded but vulnerable.

Leander thinks about that, or about ripping apart the man's power and killing him in a single confrontation. But the power vacuum would cause chaos and, in the end, more deaths than he could allow.

Instead, he choses a quiet night, when most people are out on a big job.

He kills the men at the door. Effortless. He drags their bodies into an alley. He creeps in.

This must be done fast.

The warehouse is a maze of open-roofed rooms with wooden or rough brick walls. It's badly lit. He makes his way through the maze to where the upper office is, with a balcony. When he is seen, he kills the witness.

Leander tries not to be seen.

In the office, an open space with stains on the floor, Prister sleeps in his chair.

He never wakes.

**_Nine_ **

On the wall of the office, Leander leaves a message in paint. _This is what happens to traitors._ He writes it roughly, as if he were angry, perhaps badly educated. Prister will have betrayed many in his life. They may hunt his killer amongst his enemies. There will be blood, yes, and death, but Leander hopes, so very much, that it will be kept amongst murderers. He can only direct their anger, not lead it.

He leaves the way he came, and at a run.

His feet take him to the temple, to a small, dark, empty room that might have been a meeting place, where he slides down a wall and stares, afraid, guilty, alone, into the blackness.

"You and your attacks of conscience," the goddess says. She leans against him, gentle, and she kisses him.

She is distracting him with simple lust.

For this moment, he accepts it.

**_Ten_ **

For a month, the Guards find dead bodies in the lower city. They are all men. They died in fights, or were tortured. No killer is found.

For the same month, Leander goes from work to home, and back again. He attends two parties. He applies every cipher he knows to the letters. They fail.

When the killing subsides, one criminal faction has more power, another less. Seven apartments are empty of seven women, long since fled the city with all the material wealth they'd gathered, with seven sets of identification and travel papers forged on his embassy's watermarked paper.

**_Eleven_ **

It's just another night when Leander walks up to his apartment, his goddess real and visible walking up behind him. Permanent partners are, in truth, not permitted here. No one has dared tell her to leave.

He closes the door. He places his boots by the fire. He hangs his bag and coat on the back of the door. He sits and thinks longingly of roast dinner.

The door opens. The man that stands there is robed, grey-haired. He looks around, opens his mouth. Pales. "It's worse than I thought."

Leander rises to his feet. "Father! When did you arrive?"

**_Twelve_ **

"What have you done?" his father says.

The goddess turns from where she stands, picking through coins. She smiles. "Interesting."

He glances between them.

"He was dying," she says. "Alone. Afraid. What should he have done?"

"You sold yourself," his father says. " _You_."

He looks to her.

"In truth," she says, "I was weak, then. I couldn't keep just anyone alive, but a _priest_..."

The word makes him still. Unafraid.

He raises his head. He faces his father.

"Come in," he says. "I have spiced wine."

He father stares at him, face tight, hands gripping the door frame.

"What is done cannot be undone," he says. "Please, father. Sit by the fire."

"How can you say that?" his father whispers. "You cannot be sure."

"I am mercy," she says, curling her hand around his arm. "Justice. Vengeance. _You_ have no reason to be afraid of me. Come in, old man."

**_Thirteen_ **

The goddess takes herself elsewhere. An illusion of privacy.

His father relaxes.

Over wine, Leander tells him everything.

His father is not happy, but he makes himself the solemn, still head priest of the Chrysanctumites, and he listens, and he is silent.

When words run out, they are both silent.

**_Fourteen_ **

In the early hours, his father says, "You made the bargain under duress. You might yet be freed from it."

"I kill for her," Leander says.

"Still."

But the bargain is struck, the words little more than formality. He would not be the first of his line to be taken, unawares, by other gods.

"Justice," his father says. "Vengeance. Mercy. These are hard tenets to uphold."

"Yes," Leander says.

"She will ever be vengeance. You must be the mercy. It will not be easy."

Leander looks away.

His father reaches out and takes his hand. "You are my son," he says. "You will always be welcome. I will set a flame for you at the hospitality tables, and at the family shrine. We will remember. For as long as you live, we will remember. We will draw your spirit home."

"Thank you," Leander says. At least he still has that.

**_Fifteen_ **

Before he leaves in the morning, his father says, "Malon wrote to me. He's worried about you. If he ordered you dead-"

"I think he did," Leander says.

"- then I would see him dead, too." His father lays a hand on his shoulder. Solid. "We will counsel grief, but peace, should his plans succeed."

They will not. Leander cannot permit it.

"You are loved," his father says. "I will always be proud of you."

Leander says, "My regards to the family."

His father's smile doesn't quite touch his eyes. "They will be glad to hear them."

The door shuts quietly.


	6. The Fuck, part 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Relax. It's just a monologue! Just the goddess. Monologuing. Yeah.
> 
> Welp.

**Fourth**

  
  
There was a woman, once, old man.  
  
There were many women, in truth, women that filled up history and were forgotten, but we're going to talk about this woman.  
  
She left a place where she did not belong, travelled through places that didn't matter to her, and settled in a city where she did not belong. It was a different kind of not belonging. One fools could mistake for opportunity.  
  
There were no opportunities for women, in this new place. Just for men. Women got to be wives and whores and servants, just like where the woman had come from. She hated being a servant, refused to submit to a man long enough to be wed, liked the money a whore made but not the anger it carried.  
  
The woman knew men, though. The woman knew how to use them and turn them against each other, and still be standing in the aftermath. She got good at it. She got good with a knife, too. People started to look at her with fear, and it was better than respect, to her.  
  
The woman was young when she came to this new place, young enough that most still called her a child. Now she was older. She still did not belong. The fear was not acceptance. She ignored this. It was good enough.  
  
Good enough is a lie.  
  
Fear is nothing, when you have many enemies and no one to guard you.  
  
The woman thought she found someone to guard her. A mutually beneficial partnership. They worked together for two years, almost three. She did not trust him with her life, but she did trust him when it came to business. He told of a deal going down in an old temple. She followed him there. No one came. She knew what he'd done. She tried to fight.  
  
There was a war on, too. A war between the people of her homeland and this land. She did not care for war, to fight for fake patriotism, but people with a great deal of money made it clear they wanted all of her people out of the city.  
  
Her business partner was stronger, and prepared. He held her down and raped her, and he told her that she was nothing, worse than nothing, that she had the value of her sex and nothing more. He told her she was a jumped-up whore who did not belong.  
  
She stabbed him in the side with the knife hidden in her boot, and he strangled her for it.  
  
But she did not die there, on the stone floor of an abandoned temple. She fought him, she hated him, and in the darkness she found a power that spoke to her hate, and brought her soul to it, and became part of her. She slept there, and when she woke it was to a man bleeding, afraid, alone. A man whose desperation sang out sweet as briar-birds after rain.  
  
So what do you think of that?


	7. The Fuck, part 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pushing forward... but not done yet.
> 
> [or: Leander is a multiple murderer but freaks out over a little theft and treason.]

**Fifth**  
  
_**One**_  
  
The cipher on the letters remains unbroken for the next three weeks until the answer falls in his lap.  
  
There's a pause in the mail between the two countries, and then two week's worth come at once. The embassy have staff to sort it. Lord Ashdown's poor scribe has three sacks to sort through, so Leander volunteers this help.  
  
Leander is sorting a stack by return addresses, standing next to the young scribe in Lord Ashdown's airy study, when he looks up at the shelf of books on the wall behind the desk.  
  
Books.  
  
He is such a monumental idiot.

_**Two**_  
  
Listing the embassador's books is easy. He comes in early one day and notes down every book on his shelves, crammed between folders and papers and letters. Compared to the memorised list of books on that shelf in Lord Ashdown's study, there are far too many in common.  
  
He starts breaking into the homes of the embassador's friends. He takes nothing, only an inventory of the books they keep closest to them. One by one, the books in common are whittled down to five, then three, then two - a first edition account of a trader in some far northern land, and a chronicle of his own country's monarchy. He owns the second, right down to the edition, but has never read it before he tests it against the cipher and gets gibberish.  
  
It must be the other. He has to find it.  
  
He tries every book dealer in the city.  
  
 _ **Three**_

If he cannot find it, he will have to steal it.  
  
"They're going to notice," the goddess points out. "They care about their books."  
  
He's lying on his bed. The boarding house is quiet, for once.  
  
"Then I'll disguise it," he says. A robbery, of some kind. But if -  
  
"Books are harder to sell than jewellery," she says, running light fingers over his jaw. He swallows.  
  
"Fire," he says.  
  
"Too obvious."  
  
"But if it looks like a candle -"  
  
"They know you know," she says. Her nails are ragged. "I am a thief, sweetling. Listen to me very carefully."  
  
He listens.  
  
 _ **Four**_  
  
The goddess' plan hides a needle in a needle-stack.  
  
Leander spends two weeks' worth of nights watching a neighbourhood of rich estates. It's slow. He's nearly caught too many times. When he's done, he knows the weaknesses of a dozen grandiose mansions.  
  
One of them is the house of the honourable Lord Mittle, a minor man in the circle of conspirators.  
  
He picks out the first five at random, going through them in a couple of nights, picking up whatever's small and shiny and, from each, taking a few books that look expensive.   
  
Lord Mittle's study isn't even locked.   
  
The last six are harder - there are hired and city guards to contend with - but otherwise, it's all so easy. Too easy.  
  
The night after he finishes, he curls up in bed and doesn't respond, no matter how the goddess pesters him.  
  
What is he? Who has he become?  
  
 _ **Five**_  
  
The bag of stolen goods taunts him.  
  
He sells most of the books to a dealer, dumps jewellery and ornaments into the river at night, hides the book he did it for amongst his other neat stacks where no one should see it. He translates in snatched hours, jumping at sudden noises.  
  
At all the parties he has to go to, no one seems alarmed, worried, stressed. Lord Mittle hasn't even mentioned a theft.  
  
Is that it? Will a man's pride save him?  
  
He translates, letter by letter. When the goddess leans over his shoulder, tight, close, reading, she laughs.  
  
 _ **Six**_  
  
Alone, in his room, Leander lays out the truth in front of him.  
  
Some of the letters are vague, even though they would have been in code. But they each signed their names. He organises them by author and order, and he stacks them all neatly.  
  
There are three that belong to no conspirator he met.  
  
They are direct, to the point, full of pride and assured control. Each are signed with a crest, and a crown. No name. But he knows who that crest belongs to.  
  
The king of his home country. His King.  
  
His King, telling the Ambassador to throw deals in his favour. His King, telling Sitam Malon that his every action will be rewarded. His King, commanding a retired general to start a righteous war.  
  
His King, to whom Leander's death would have been nothing but a colour, a flag, a cause to kill thousands for.  
  
 _ **Seven**_  
  
Leander sends a package to his father.  
  
He includes copies of the letters, encoded and decoded. He pins a note to them to tell his family which book to find. He writes a detailed account of his time in the city, leaving out nothing.   
  
He works. He smiles. He lies through his teeth.  
  
The King holds himself above the law, and he can. Leander cannot. To do what he must, turn against the will of his leader, he -  
  
But there is no alternative.  
  
He exists in a state of nothingness, lost and bewildered, before she makes the decision for him.

_**Eight**_  
  
The King of this country has advisors. He also has a betrothed, and she has a father called Duke Alsind, and he lives in a lodge outside the city.  
  
Leander doesn't like coincidences.  
  
It's a night's travel. He goes straight from the embassy, slips out a side gate and walks there, the goddess haunting him under a full moon. He arrives before dawn. He insists on being seen.  
  
Leander lays the letters, and their translation, and the book in front of him and says nothing.  
  
The Duke sits in his welcoming room in his nightgown and he reads it all. When he is done, he sets it aside, and he says, "This is treason to your king."  
  
"They saw me dead," Leander says, soft.  
  
The Duke nods. "Do you need protection?"  
  
"No," the goddess says, laying a hand on Leander's arm. Visible. Smiling.  
  
The Duke eyes her and says nothing.  
  
 _ **Nine**_  
  
His head is swimming.  
  
He was offered fresh bread and porridge. He refused it. He remains in the welcoming room alone, except for the goddess. Lies on a long couch with her cold hands on his.  
  
He does not want to open his eyes. He might see Tanie's face, not hers.  
  
"He's next," she tells him. "No one is above the law. Not mine."  
  
Regicide, too. Why not? He's already a thief.  
  
He could have told the ambassador he knew. He could have run. He could have done anything but this.  
  
"Rest, sweetness," she breathes. He can feel her smiling.  
  
 _ **Ten**_  
  
"Do you know what you've walked into?" the Duke says.  
  
The carriage rattles in dawn light. The horses are racing to the city.  
  
Leander says, "I'm a Chrysanctumite," and looks everywhere but at the Duke or the goddess.  
  
"The god-killers," the Duke says. "Or so I'm told."  
  
"We teach gods how to die." The words tug out of his chest. "We don't kill them. They come to us. It's their choice." He smiles. It's bitter. "If a god can snare us, we also make good priests."  
  
The Duke nods.  
  
"The goddess of that temple was the city's patron goddess," he says. "When the city was young, often raided and oppressed, her rule was welcomed. As the city grew strong and profitable, the people started to demand peace. That is why they killed her."  
  
The goddess hisses.  
  
"We have not had a patron deity since," he says. "Keep it that way."  
  
 _ **Eleven**_  
  
The Duke stops his carriage at an inn inside the city. Leander slips away unnoticed. He goes back to the boarding house, changes, and packs his bags, pushing them under the bed. Then he gets back to the embassy. It's noon. He's visibly tired, dishevelled, and stumbles through no less than six apologies for his lateness before the ambassador finally tells him to sit down with a fatherly fond, if worried, smile.  
  
He works.  
  
The armed men don't come until the evening.  
  
Leander gets to see Ambassador Sitam Malon's face change to true horror when they march into his office.

**_Twelve_**  
  
The goddess is laughing.  
  
An officer is presenting the ambassador with a writ for his arrest, the armed men are taking him by the arms, and the goddess is laughing.  
  
Leander's head swims.  
  
He stands.  
  
The ambassador looks at him. "You've undone everything," he says, in a voice of pure despair, and it should feel good, but it doesn't. "You've killed me."  
  
The goddess is laughing.  
  
"You killed _me_ ," Leander says. "Isn't it just a fair trade, ambassador?"  
  
"If one must die," the ambassador says, "For the betterment of all -"  
  
Leander says, "One is too many." Tanie, on her knees in the temple. "One is a war." Stone and dust and pain. "Ambassador, with all due respect, I quit."  
  
The ambassador smiles past the officer, the officer who is looking between them. "We could have been friends, my dear boy."  
  
"No," Leander says. "No, never."  
  
The goddess hasn't stopped laughing.  
  
 _ **Thirteen**_  
  
Leander takes his bags to Lord Ashdown's house.  
  
It's deathly silent. There is no Lady of the house, no servants. It's neat, still, and dark.  
  
Except for a horse, saddled, in the stables outside. Except for a light in Lord Ashdown's office. Except for Lord Ashdown, holding a box of letters over his fireplace.  
  
He stops to stare.  
  
The goddess takes the box from his hands, smiling.  
  
Leander ties him to his own chair, smothers the fire and sets the box on the table, open and waiting. He goes downstairs, straps his bags to the horse, and leaves the city.  
  
 _ **Fourteen**_  
  
He travelled to the city by mail carriage. Carriages are faster than a single, overladen, horse.   
  
Leander trades the horse for passage on a caravan going towards his own country's capital city. He sells his fine shirts for road leathers, and keeps his coat rolled up in his only surviving bag.  
  
News travels quickly. The story he hears is that a group of conspirators have been arrested, some already executed. That the King accused his own wife of sedition and adultery and imprisoned in the Summer Palace.  
  
Leander leaves the caravan at night, slipping out quiet, unseen, unnoticed, and he turns east.  
  
 _ **Fifteen**_  
  
The goddess is lonely company. He's safe, on his own. Capable of keeping himself safe. He knows it every time he reaches for the knife and it is there, in his hand, like it never left. But she is bored, and dead thieves on the road won't appease her.  
  
When she's bored, she turns vicious.  
  
He sells his services as a scribe in every town and village he walks through for food, shelter, cart rides as far as they'll take him. He kills no one, no matter how jaggedly sharp she becomes, or how much they would deserve to die.  
  
 _ **Sixteen**_  
  
There is no room in the Summer Palace for a hungry, poor scribe. There's no room for anyone, now it's a prison.  
  
He is numb. Being turned away by the servants doesn't have any effect on him. He looks past the pretty maid who tries to flirt with him, leaves, and finds other ways.  
  
In the end, he climbs the wall.  
  
The Palace was never built to be defendable. The wall is rough, angled inwards. Bag strapped to his back, he scales it in the middle of the night and slips between guard patrols, heading upwards. Drawn upwards.  
  
 _ **Seventeen**_  
  
Leander can't get even close to the Queen's quarters by corridors and hallways.  
  
He spends a day sleeping fitfully in a store room. Hunger gnaws at him, but it's easy to ignore. It doesn't matter.  
  
Nothing matters.  
  
He goes around the outside, across and up from an abandoned apartment, raw fingers clinging to the edges of smooth stone blocks. He rests on empty balconies, but not for long. Not until he reaches the only one with a door sitting ajar, curtain tugged out in the air by the errant breeze.  
  
The goddess says nothing. She opens the door for him.  
  
 _ **Eighteen**_  
  
The Queen is awake. She doesn't notice him. She is sat in a chair, long hair shining, bent over sewing.  
  
He says, "Did you do it?"  
  
She freezes. She doesn't scream, shout, run. She slowly leans forward, setting the sewing down on a stool, and sits straight up.  
  
"The letters," he says. "The war. Was it you?"  
  
She says nothing.  
  
"Please." His voice cracks. "Was it you?"  
  
"No," she says. "I cheated on him. But I didn't do that." She sounds calm. There's a tremble in her shoulders, a perceptible shift when he steps forward.  
  
"Kill her," the goddess says.  
  
 _ **Nineteen**_  
  
The knife is there.  
  
But -  
  
"Kill her." The goddess digs claws into his arm. "She deserves it. Look at her. Privilege and power and arrogance, look at her, can't you _see_ it?" Sharp, tight. Painful. Bleeding. "Burn her. Hurt her. _Kill_ her. Wipe that smile off her face. Do it."  
  
But he -  
  
"This is an order," she hisses. "You are my priest. You will kill her."  
  
But he _believes_ her. The only monsters in her shadow are pride and the certainty of betrayal.  
  
He opens his mouth and he says, "No."  
  
"Is this defiance?" the goddess says.  
  
"Yes," he says. "I won't do it."  
  
"You're denying _me_ ," she says.  
  
"Yes."  
  
Pain twists in his chest.  
  
"She has killed people," the goddess says, "By existing. Everything she has is built on blood and sacrifice and death. She has to die."  
  
"Mercy," he says. "Vengeance, justice, but there has to be mercy."  
  
 _ **Twenty**_  
  
Pain blurs dizzily in his memory.  
  
He opens his eyes to warmth, sunlight, a bedroom coloured scarlet and silver. An open window. The goddess, sitting on the windowsill, giving him a look of disdain.  
  
A gaping hole inside him, like something ripped out. He _understands_.  
  
"I have no time for a priest who won't do what he's told," she says, curling her lip.  
  
"I'm free," he says.  
  
She snorts. "Death calls on his debts," she says. "Count your days."  
  
She disappears.  
  
He's _free_ \- for a moment, he feels _joy_ -  
  
But he's not, of course. Not while the King still lives.


End file.
